


From Failures

by Innwich



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Ahch-To, Gen, Meditation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22863892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: During his self-imposed exile on Ahch-To, Luke was visited by two unwelcome guests.AKA What if the Mandalorian found Luke before Rey did.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV) & Luke Skywalker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 168





	1. Chapter 1

The sky was heavy with clouds when Luke was building a fire outside his stone hut to boil water.

At the foot of the cliff that his hut was perched on, the sea stretched out into the horizon, over which the twin suns were rising. The fog from the sea obscured the islands nearby. Luke might as well be alone on this desolate planet, far away from the mapped regions of the galaxy. The illusion would be broken when the caretakers returned from the sea and began their morning routine of cleaning the grounds of the village, but until then, Luke only had the ancient huts of the empty village for company.

A loose pebble tumbled down the side of the cliff. Startled, a porg screeched in its nest on a cliff ledge.

Luke dove behind his hut.

A grappling hook shot through the air where he had been standing seconds ago. Having missed its target, the grappling hook was rapidly retracted. Luke peered around the wall, and was immediately forced back behind cover by a fireball.

A silvery helmet with a T-shaped visor loomed behind the flamethrower. A Mandalorian had found him.

Of course it would be Mandalorians who tracked him down to this planet on which the Jedi Order had built their first temple. This was the end of the Jedi that Luke had wished for, However, now that the end was here, Luke was having a hard time taking it lying down.

The Mandalorian’s jetpack roared. The Mandalorian was shooting a steady stream of fire at Luke from mid-air. Luke was pinned down; he couldn’t deflect fire with a lightsaber like he could deflect blaster shots. Fiery tongues were licking over the top of the wall. The flames were growing in size and heat. The Mandalorian was descending on the hut behind the covering fire.

For the first time in years, Luke reached out in the Force, and _pulled_. A boulder struck the Mandalorian in his jetpack. The flames coming out of the jackpack’s jet nozzles flared. The Mandalorian tried to regain control of his jetpack as it flew him in tight spirals towards the ground, but he couldn’t pull out of his corkscrew dive. He grunted when he hit the ground. His helmet and armor banged hard against the rocks and then scraped across the ground before his jetpack died. He lay on his front, temporarily stunned from the fall.

“Who are you?” Luke straightened up from his crouch behind his hut. The walls and roof of his hut were smouldering. Even in an uncharted planetary system far away from the Core Worlds, trouble found him with the uncanny accuracy of a self-guided missile. 

The Mandalorian was getting up on his knees and elbows sluggishly. His jetpack sputtered but failed to start.

Luke approached the Mandaloria. “Who sent you?”

Instead of answering Luke, the Mandalorian aimed his right hand at Luke, and shot fire out of his vambrace.

Luke was prepared for the flamethrower. He kept walking and the flames parted around him. The heat singed the ends of his sleeves but didn’t burn him. He repeated, “Who sent you?”

The fire from the flamethrower was dying down. The flamethrower was spitting fumes.

Luke was about to reach down and restrain the Mandalorian when he saw a shimmering glint between the Mandalorian’s gloved fingers. Luke drew back and raised his hand. He felt for the vibrations of a vibroblade in the Force. He reached out and _p_ -

An invisible force slammed into Luke. It flung him away from the Mandalorian. Luke crashed into the side of his hut. Cracked rocks rolled down from the hole he made in the wall.

Luke lay in the rubble. Faintly, he was aware that his beard was matted with blood trickling down from his head. White spots of pain burst in his swimming vision. He tried to move. He felt like he had been stomped on by a stampede of banthas. Unlike him, the Mandalorian, who was breathing raggedly under his helmet, had gotten up on his feet.

The mouth of a blaster barrel was pressed against Luke’s temple.

“Don’t make me shoot you, sorcerer,” the Mandalorian said.

“A Force-sensitive Mandalorian,” Luke said, going still. “Just when I thought I’ve seen everything there is to see in the galaxy.”

“It wasn’t me. You can thank the kid for that hole in your house,” the Mandalorian said.

A short green creature dressed in beige robes peeked out from behind the Mandalorian’s legs. It was a child with shiny dark eyes. Most of the child’s wrinkled face stayed hidden behind the Mandalorian’s cloak. Luke would never have guessed a child was capable of the power he had displayed if Luke hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

“Jedi have a long history of aggression against my people. I needed to make sure you’d let me say my piece,” the Mandalorian said.

“Every word of what you just said was wrong,” Luke bit out, “but I’m listening. Not that you’re giving me a choice.”

The Mandalorian lowered his blaster pistol but didn’t holster it. Under the Mandalorian’s watchful eye, Luke clutched at his own tender side as he climbed to his feet. Luke wiped at the blood on his face. The wound was worse than it looked, but it was clotting. It would heal in time.

“The kid can do things with his mind, and I heard you take in and train children like him,” the Mandalorian said. “I want you to train him.”

“First time someone beat me up and then ask me for a favor,” Luke said. He limped back to the fire pit. His pile of logs had been knocked askew during the fight. The wind had blown out the small fire that Luke had lit. “If you don’t count those times that Sand People shot down my speeder and took my water, although I’m not sure they were asking. Mostly they just screamed at me, and left me for dead in the desert. I hated the sand.”

“He’s different from the descriptions in the songs,” the Mandalorian said to the child. “Did your magic damage him?”

The child cooed.

“The kid is attuned to the Force, but I can’t be his teacher,” Luke said. He collected his logs from the fire pit. He wasn’t in the mood for breakfast anymore. He would keep the logs in his hut for another time. Chopping logs was a tedious task that could easily take up an entire day. “I’ve sworn I’ll never train another Jedi.”

The Mandalorian stood in his way. “I won’t take that for an answer.” 

“I will push you off this cliff,” Luke warned him, before stepping around him.

“It has taken me years to track you down. Do you know Imperial remnants had an incomplete copy of your chain code?” the Mandalorian said behind him. “It was put together in a classified project during the last war. The project was terminated by Darth Vader before work was finished.” 

Luke stiffened at the mention of his father. The Battle of Endor had been a lifetime ago, a time when embers of hope had burnt hot enough to bring down an empire. “You found me and you have your answer. Now you can your kid back to Mandalore or whatever planet you call home.”

“The kid is one of your kind. He is home now,” the Mandalorian insisted. “By Creed, he’s no longer under my custody.”

The child whined quietly, and Luke made the mistake of looking down at him. The child was no longer hiding behind the Mandalorian’s cloak. His eyes were round and wide like dark buttons. His long ears were pressed flat against his head. He was sucking on a pendant that hung from a fine chain around his neck. He looked every bit as apprehensive as Luke felt.

“Look after him for me.” The Mandalorian walked away from them.

“You can’t ditch a kid here,” Luke said. His head whipped up. “This is a sacred island, not an orphanage!”

“I’ll come back for him after I find food. A foundling can only be handed to guardians that will provide adequate care and protection. You’re not ready to raise a blurrg, much less a foundling,” the Mandalorian said over his shoulder.

“You’re getting off the island with the kid. You’re trespassing,” Luke thundered.

“We’re in the Unknown Regions. Galactic laws don’t apply out here,” the Mandalorian said. He disappeared down a path leading down to the sea.

Luke moved to follow him, but a group of green reptilian figures dressed in white were coming up the path that the Mandalorian had taken. The caretakers were returning to the village. The matron of the caretakers stopped in her tracks upon seeing Luke and pointed at Luke’s hut. She hitched up her robes and ran up the path to Luke’s hut with the rest of the caretakers hot on her heels.

“I can explain,” Luke said.

The matron refused to hear his explanation. The caretakers crowded around his hut and inspected the hole in the scorched wall, chattering amongst themselves. A caretaker burst into tears and had to be comforted by the matron. With his morning ruined and his name tarnished, Luke had nowhere to go but higher up the hill to the Force tree that housed the original Jedi texts. The child toddled after him.

Sitting in the hollow of the Force Tree, next to the shelf of Jedi texts, Luke whittled a piece of wood that he had been shaping into a fishing lure. He had lost another feathered lure to a curious porg last week. He ignored the child as the child crawled over the thick tree roots poking up from the soil. Later that day, the Mandalorian found them and collected the child from Luke. When Luke returned to his stone hut, cooking smoke was rising from the other side of the island and the smell of roasted fish permeated the air.


	2. Chapter 2

_“Yes, Father.”_

Luke hadn’t had that dream for years, but it had unsettled him last night just as it had unsettled him in the months following Cloud City. Luke couldn’t fall asleep again, and dawn found him greasing his prosthetic hand at his worktable. His leather glove was laid out on the edge of the table by his elbow.

The gears in Luke’s prosthetic worked noisily as Luke bent back the metallic joints. His prosthetic was nothing like the first prosthetic he had received, which had been crafted by a medical droid in the Rebellion. The medical droid had taken great pains to build a prosthetic that was a mirror image of his remaining hand. The prosthetic had been connected to his nervous system and responded to neural controls. it could have fooled Luke into believing he had never lost his hand if not for the phantom pain he had felt in his wrist whenever he had startled awake after another one of that dream. He had dreamt of dangling above a bottomless pit and hearing a disembodied voice say, _“Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.”_

It was strange to think that Luke had now lived more years without his right hand than he had with it. The Mandalorian’s mention of Darth Vader had brought unwanted memories back, and they had manifested in the form of long-forgotten dreams.

Cooking smoke was rising above the treetops on the other side of the island again when Luke climbed down the cliff to harvest green milk from the thalan-sirens. The thalan-sirens had noticed the smoke, and were humming to each other over the whistling sea breeze. With a full stomach, Luke trekked across the island. He had slept on the matter last night.

A bulky gunship was parked in a meadow. A tree nearby had been clipped by the ship’s wing and a chunk of its trunk had been scorched.

Luke followed the cooking smoke to a campsite half a mile away from the ship. Beside the campfire, the child was snoring in a silvery bassinet that was hovering a few inches off the ground. The child had kicked off his blankets in his sleep; it was too warm to sleep under covers. The Mandalorian was peering up at a family of porgs that were nesting high in a tree, and the porgs were staring down at him solemnly in return.

“I hope you don’t keep these things as pets,” the Mandalorian said, having heard Luke’s footsteps.

“Don’t let their looks fool you, they’re a pest. They’ll infest your ship if you don’t lock your doors,” Luke said.

“That’s good,” the Mandalorian said with a note of relief in his voice. “The kid had two of them for breakfast.”

The child snuffled in his sleep. His belly was round underneath his robes. The Mandalorian pressed a button on his vambrace. The hood of the bassinet closed silently over the sleeping child.

“He’s out like a light,” Luke said.

“He’s vulnerable when he sleeps. He can’t use his powers,” the Mandalorian said.

“He has you to look out for him,” Luke said.

“Not always,” the Mandalorian said simply. “I’ll send the kid over to you when he’s awake.”

“I’m not here for him,” Luke said. The Mandalorian tilted his head. Luke had his attention. “I can’t force you off the island, but there is something you should know, You had time to scout out the island yesterday. Did you see the downed X-Wing starfighter in the sea?”

“Underwater on the rocks in the north,” the Mandalorian said. “What about it?”

“I flew it into the sea,” Luke said. He didn’t mention the fire and light after the crash, or the hundreds of fish scalded alive by the jet fuel burning in the water and floated belly up to the surface, or the taste of salt and iron in his throat as he had forced the submerged cockpit hatch open. “Before you ask me to train the kid again, you should know I came to Ahch-To to die. I’m all that’s left of the Jedi Order and it’ll die with me.”

The Mandalorian glanced in the direction of the child’s closed bassinet. “Thank you for your honesty, but the kid will decide if he wants to leave or stay. He has the last say.”

“He can barely speak,” Luke said.

“He’s sixty years old, old enough to know what he wants,” the Mandalorian said. “He’ll decide. This is the Way.”

“This is irresponsible parenting,” Luke said.

The Mandalorian didn’t say anything. He stared Luke down silently, or at least Luke assumed he was staring him down under the beskar helmet, and his T-shaped visor tracked Luke’s movements until Luke left.

When the child came to Luke again, Luke was down at the beach with a fishing rod, watching for shadows swimming under the water surface. There was a deceptively deep pool under the rocky outcrop where he was sitting. Small fish liked to swim into the pool to eat seaweed that floated up from the seafloor, and large fish liked to follow small fish into the pool for a big feast.

As Luke waited for a fish to bite, he let his mind drift. The ache in his bruised back and ribs dulled as his body relaxed. It was the closest he could get to a meditative state without meditating. Thoughts of Ben and Leia and Han and the New Republic left him.

He had been in his twenties when he had first seen the sea. When he had asked Aunt Beru if the sea was as beautiful as it was in the storybooks, Aunt Beru had told him that she and Uncle Owen had never seen the sea before, but that Luke’s mother had come from a planet of many oceans and lakes. If Uncle Owen no longer needed Luke to help around the moisture farm, maybe Luke would go to that planet and see the sea for himself one day.

The sea, it turned out, was more beautiful than in the storybooks, and more deadly too.

A loud coo drew Luke’s attention from the pool. The child was toddling across the beach alone and making a beeline for him. The beach stretched for miles and looped around the island. If the Mandalorian was lurking nearby, Luke couldn’t see him.

“Where’s your keeper?” Luke said. 

The child tried to climb up the rocky outcrop to reach Luke. His clawed hands curled around the smooth slippery edges that had been worn down by years of exposure to the elements.

Luke put down his fishing rod to watch the child. He didn’t want to have to fish the child out of the sea if the child fell off the rocks. “The Jedi are gone. If you’re seeking tutelage from a bedtime story, you’re as crazy as they come.”

“Any different are you?”

Luke spun around. “Master Yoda.” 

Yoda’s ghost stood on the rocks behind Luke. He was holding his walking stick and dressed in his Jedi robes. He was no older than Luke had last seen him on his deathbed on Dagobah.

“Finally hear me, do you?” Yoda said. “Close yourself off from the Force you did.”

“But how am I-?” But Luke already knew how before he finished the question. Luke had reopened his connection to the Force in the fight yesterday. After the fight, he had been too distracted by the child to remember to severe the connection again.

“Correct you are,” Yoda said.

The child had climbed up the outcrop. He waddled up to Yoda. The Force was strong with the child. Despite the child’s lack of training in the Force, he could see Yoda. Yoda’s wrinkles smoothed out to a toothy smile. 

“A young one he is. Watch your words I suggest. Remember my childhood I do.” Yoda shook his walking stick at Luke. “A long memory we have.”

“I didn’t say anything to the kid,” Luke said.

“A good advice for later then. Long hours you will spend with him,” Yoda said.

“I won’t train him,” Luke said, forcing the words from between his teeth. It had been easier to say them to the Mandalorian than to the master who had tasked Luke with passing on his teaching. “I’m not fit to be a teacher.”

“A good look on you, self-pity is not,” Yoda said to Luke, and then he sat back on his heels and made gurgling sounds at the child. The child giggled and responded in kind.

Luke would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a traitorous surge of paternal instincts whenever he looked at the child. The child, with his chubby cheeks and stubby limbs, was no different from the younglings that Luke had brought to his Temple. Those younglings had been raised and trained in the ways of the Jedi, and had died or fled in the destruction of his new Jedi Order. “Why don’t you train the kid? You speak his language. It’s half the battle.”

“Limited is my time in this world. Baby nonsense you can speak too,” Yoda said.

“I can’t do it,” Luke said, and both he and Yoda knew he wasn’t referring to his proficiency in unintelligible baby talk. 

“The last Jedi you are. To teach the child, there is no one,” Yoda said.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Luke said. “If Leia hadn’t asked me to train Ben, Ben would’ve grown up on the Millennium Falcon with her and Han. He’d have his parents. He wouldn’t be a Jedi but he’d be happy.”

“Maybe,” Yoda agreed. “Without training, blind and deaf to the Force, Force-Sensitive humans may go their whole lives. Like you would have if Master Kenobi hadn’t taken you out of the deserts. But long lives my people have. Powerful the child is, yes. Many years he will live. He will find his own path in the Force, with you or without.”

“Then I’ll fail him like I failed Ben. The kid doesn’t know about Ben. He doesn’t know what I did. Snoke seduced Ben and I raised my lightsabre against Ben. I gave him the last push. He turned to the Dark Side because of me,” Luke said. The words tumbled out of him like a flood. It was cathartic to say them out loud. However, he didn’t feel the relief for long before Yoda whacked him in the head with the walking stick. “Ow!”

”Skywalkers, looked to the horizon you have your whole life, but fear has always been your downfall,” Yoda scolded him, brandishing his walking stick. “Forgot my teaching, did you?”

The child laughed at Luke’s pained grimace and tried to grab Yoda’s walking stick. He stumbled when the walking stick passed through his hand like air. He made a confused warble. Yoda levitated a broken tree branch that had washed up on the beach and offered it to the child instead. The child hesitated in grabbing it, and only did so after Yoda nudged him with it. Unlike Yoda’s walking stick, the tree branch was solid in his hands.

“Jaded from your failure you have become, but the most important lessons in life, failures teach us,” Yoda continued. “From a child’s mind you can learn, and you have much to learn, young Luke.”

Yoda played with the child at the child’s insistence, and left Luke alone with his own thoughts. There was a heart-stopping moment when the child waded into the sea. Luckily the child was surprisingly buoyant and paddled in the water. Yoda spoke to the child in gurgles and babbles. Luke wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t the language of their species, but Yoda insisted it was nothing more than meaningless baby talk to tease the child.

When the child yawned, Yoda told him to go home. The child refused to leave until Yoda vanished as silently as he had appeared. The child toddled away in his wet robes and took with him the tree branch that Yoda had given him.

“Master Yoda?” Luke said. “The kid has left. You can come back now.”

Yoda didn’t show up again. Luke was only answered by sea waves crashing against the rocks under him. He sighed and packed up his fishing rod. He was happy to let the dead rest. They were the ones that like to haunt him from beyond the grave. 

He checked his bucket, and released the fish that were too small or too young. He trudged up the hills to the huts where the caretakers lived, and offered his day’s catch to the caretakers. The caretaker that opened the door made him wait outside, while she consulted the matron.

The caretaker returned with a message. Luke had only a rudimentary understanding of the caretakers’ language, and had to ask her to speak slower for him. The matron accepted his offering but hadn’t forgiven him for the damage done to his stone hut, at which he was staying only because the matron allowed it. The matron understood that the newcomers had started the fight, but suggested that Luke advised his guests to respect this land and its sacred structures, as all other seekers of truth that had come before and would come after them must do.

“They’re not my guests,” Luke attempted to say in the caretakers’ language.

The caretaker looked at him blankly, and closed the door on him.


End file.
